Lily Beaurivage hopes to start a new family tradition when she begins school at Ecole St. Elizabeth this fall.

It’s the end of an old one, as Ecole St. Andrew shuts its doors after 60 years.

For only eight years has the southeast Regina school existed without a member of the Beaurivage family enrolled.

“I’m hoping that other Beaurivages will go there … and we’ll start a new tradition,” said Lily, whose last day of Grade 5 is Wednesday.

Her brother Regan is finishing Grade 3.

They are the 14th and 15th members of their family to attend St. Andrew.

The first two started there in 1959 — Bruce in Grade 3 and Jacqueline in Grade 2 — after their parents Violet and Germain Beaurivage moved from Rowatt to a little house on Broadway Avenue.

In 1960, their brother Gary joined them as he started Grade 1.

In the years to follow, so did their siblings Keith (a kindergartener in 1963), Jean-Paul (1965), Ronald (1967), Michael (1969), Mary-Jane (1974) and, finally, Claude (1976).

Then the second generation came along. Keith’s son Joel started kindergarten at the school in 1989, four years after Claude finished Grade 8. Joel’s sister Danielle followed in 1990.

With his cousins nearing high school, Jean-Paul’s son Jeremy began kindergarten in 1997. Jeremy’s sister Candina started in 1999.

Two years after she left St. Andrew, her little cousin Lily started preschool in 2010.

“If Lily and Regan had not been attending there today, (the school closure) might have come and gone without much thought,” said Claude, whose wife Ginger often volunteers at the school, serving hot lunches or chaperoning field trips.

As most of St. Andrew’s 400 students and staff move to St. Elizabeth this fall, at least two things will be familiar: The play structure, which is being re-installed at the new school; and the exclusively French immersion programming, which has grown since it was introduced in the 1980s.

But much will be different.

The smell of fresh paint will replace the smell of old books. St. Andrew smells “like old paper,” said Regan.

The St. Andrew Storm nickname — chosen by Joel — will make way for a new one. Regan has pitched the St. Elizabeth Hurricanes.

At nearly eight kilometres from the old school, St. Elizabeth will be closer to home for about 70 per cent of the students, although the Beaurivages will no longer be able to bike or walk there.

Adjoined to the public Wascana Plains School, the building will be much larger, too.

“I’m scared I’m going to get lost because it’s huge,” said Lily. “I think St. Andrew is the perfect size, but there’s lots of people going there, so that’s why I think we’re moving.”

“Going back into the building as an adult, you think, ‘Wow, this place really shrunk over the years,’” said Claude. “When I was there … the gymnasium looked huge, but it certainly doesn’t look very big anymore.”

When Keith started at St. Andrew, the gym didn’t even exist. Neither did the school bus: He took public transit on cold winter days, five cents each way, or walked with his siblings.

“The thing that comes to my mind as the school closes is just how much it changed from my school experience there to my experience as a parent there,” said Keith, who remembers using an abacus to learn math.

His students had new technology at their disposal. Even when Claude was in Grade 8, a computer room had been equipped with Commodore PETs.

Both brothers remember strict discipline — Keith because he managed to avoid the strap, and Claude because he didn’t.

Principal Gordon Domm was “tough on me, deservedly so,” said Claude.

“I was subjected to corporal punishment on four occasions,” he admitted, laughing.

“Four times. You must have been a brat,” said Lily. “We just get a scary talk with a teacher.”

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